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I'm trying to copy files and subfolders from A folder without the A itself. For instance, A folder contains next:
| file1.txt
| file2.txt
| subfolder1
Executing next command gives me wrong result:
sudo cp -r /home/username/A/ /usr/lib/B/
The result is
/usr/lib/B/A/...copied files...
instead of..
/usr/lib/B/...copied files...
How can I reach the expected one without origin-folder
advanced cp
cp -r /home/username/A/. /usr/lib/B/
This is especially great because it works no matter whether the target directory already exists.
shell globbing
If there are not too many objects in the directory then you can use shell globbing:
mkdir -p /usr/lib/B/
shopt -s dotglob
cp -r /home/username/A/* /usr/lib/B/
rsync
rsync -a /home/username/A/ /usr/lib/B/
The / at the end of the source path is important; works no matter whether the target directory already exists.
find
mkdir -p /usr/lib/B/
find /home/username/A/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -exec cp -r -t /usr/lib/B/ {} +
or if you don't need empty subdirectories:
find /home/username/A/ -mindepth 1 -type f -exec cp --parents -t /usr/lib/B/ {} +
(without mkdir)
A/* does make sense but there are situations in which it doesn't work.
Jan 25, 2015 at 16:01
shopt is bash specific. With zsh, use *(D). with ksh93, FIGNORE='@(.|..)'. cp -t is GNU specific. The find one will not work properly as it will copy both A/ and its content (including subdirs) several times.
Jan 25, 2015 at 16:37
-maxdepth 1 (-mindepth and -maxdepth being GNU extensions now also supported by a few others. Portably find .../. ! -name . -prune -exec ....)
Jan 25, 2015 at 16:42
find .../. causes an error here.
Jan 25, 2015 at 16:47
If on a GNU system, from man cp:
-T, --no-target-directory
treat DEST as a normal file
This allows you to write cp -rT /home/username/A/ /usr/lib/B/ to do exactly the right thing.
cp. But that's true that -T won't work with a non-GNU cp.
Tell cp to copy the directory's contents and not the directory itself:
sudo cp -r /home/username/A/* /usr/lib/B/
shopt -s dotglob for this to work if there are any dotfiles in /home/username/A/.
cp -r foo/* bar one of two things will happen: if bar does not exist, or if it exists but is not a directory, you will get an error message. If it does exist and is a directory, then all non-hidden files/dirs from foo will be copied into bar. If you run cp -r foo/ bar, then if bar exists and is a directory, that will copy the directory foo and place it as a subdirectory of bar. If bar does not exist or is not a directory, you will get an error.